Buying more disc storage may solve your immediate problem. However it is not a viable long-term solution. Problems can arise with:

Hardware and system migration

A UK telecoms company had an 8TB database. They wanted to refresh hardware and move from Informix to Oracle. To move 8TB of data would take four to five days. This was not feasible as the business could not be down for that long. By archiving they drastically reduced the database down to about 3TB.

Data recovery

Large databases are also problematic for data recovery. We have worked with a customer who had 27TB of data in Oracle. To recover their data would take an estimated 3.5 days – which is totally unacceptable for a 24/7 operation.

SAP HANA (SAP S/4HANA)

A new product, built on HANA’s cutting-edge in-memory platform – SAP S/4HANA helps business to run simply.

Innovations include easier customer adoption and improved data model, user experience, decision-making and business processes. It also opens up possibilities across the Internet of Things, Big Data, business networks and mobile-first.

The business scope for each edition is designed to offer maximum choice to customers in alignment with their business requirements.

SAP S/4HANAon-premise edition

Offers a business scope similar in terms of coverage, functionality, industries and languages to the current SAP Business Suite.

SAP S/4HANA also includes the transformational simplifications delivered with SAP Simple Finance (SAP Accounting powered by SAP HANA) as well as a planned integration with SuccessFactors Employee Central and Ariba Network.

SAP S/4HANA managed cloud edition

Addresses a similar business scope as the on-premise edition. Covers essential core ERP scenarios (accounting, controlling, materials management, production planning and control, sales and distribution, logistics execution, plant maintenance, project system and PLM).

It also includes integration with SuccessFactors Employee Central, Ariba Network and SAP hybris Marketing.

SAP Simple Finance marked the first step in our SAP S/4HANA road map for customers. The solution demonstrates the value of simplification – no indexes, no aggregates and no redundancies – and instant insight in Finance.

SAP S/4HANA on-premise edition leverages the full scope of SAP Accounting powered by SAP HANA, included in SAP Simple Finance.

SAP S/4HANA managed cloud edition is intended to leverage the same scope.

SAP S/4HANA public cloud edition focuses on a selected scope of SAP Simple Finance in alignment with the key requirements in finance.

In the context of SAP S/4HANA, SAP HANA Cloud Platform serves as an extension platform and agility layer.

It is possible to build specific capabilities extending the scope of SAP S/4HANA by either integrating non-SAP functions or building your own capabilities. The cloud platform not only serves as the development platform but also as the runtime foundation for the developed solutions.

The extensions built on the cloud platform can run against both cloud and on-premise deployments of SAP S/4HANA.

Working with larger data sets in one system saving hardware costs, operational costs, and time

Choice of deployment: cloud, on premise, or hybrid to drive quick time-to-value

Innovation is also made simple with an open platform (SAP HANA Cloud Platform) to drive advanced applications – for example, predicting, recommending, and simulating – while protecting existing investments.

Finally business users can leverage a simple, role-based user experience based on modern design principles that minimise training and increases productivity.

This reduces TCO while providing new opportunities to increase business value from existing investments.

Examples for redundant data layers are custom-built layers based on database tuning efforts such as secondary indexes, or application built-in performance accelerators such as aggregate tables or multiple general ledger versions for different managerial reporting needs.

The massive simplifications of the data model and the data processing layers enable business and technological innovations on a broad scale across all lines-of-business and industry solutions.

The new application architecture simplifies system landscape architectures and accelerates cloud deployments on an economical scale.

SAP Information Lifecycle Management (ILM)

SAP Legacy System Decommissioning

We have designed two ways for you to retrieve your data. You can either access the data through a secure portal access or request data to be retrieved via our online request service. The main difference to each service are a detailed below:

Direct Portal Access

Once authorised direct access to data

Expertise transfer on how to retrieve your data

Data available during normal service hours

Online request

Data Lock to manage retrieval of data

Data Lock experts on hand to retrieve data

Requests will be processed with agreed SLA’s and will be available during normal service hours

The frequency of requests to be agreed contractually

Suggested approach: Data moved to the archive that could require a high frequency access should be managed using direct access. Once the data has reached an age where the frequency has bottomed out (normally 2 years), the service can be changed to the online request service

Yes – Using the SAP Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) , SAP Landscaoe Transformation (SLT) and LWB tools we are able to store data (structured and unstructured) from any non-SAP legacy application